Exclusively pumping, advice and wisdom welcome
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The biggest thing, is making sure your flanges are correct, this has a big impact on milk output! As you want to exclusively pump, wearables are not recommended as ‘mains’. I personally have my spectra as my main pump, and mom cozy for when out and about to keep my body recognising the feed. Have you seen about pace feeding and the five ounce guidance about expressed milk? X
I would advise getting a handfree, this will mean you can go out and about with baby and still pump. You have have a mains powered one to if you wish as they can be more powerful although I've always gotten enough with my medella freestyle Im nearly 8 months post partum and I pump when baby feeds (which is every 3 to 4 hours unless she's asleep at night and them she can go up to 7). I pump for a max of 30 minutes. The general rule of thumb is a baby only needs a max of 1 to 1.5oz per hour so a max of 4.5oz/5oz even when they're a year old. Because your milk changes to suit them, you just have to kiss your babies skin and your body feeds off of them. Definitely pace feed and keep to a slow flow so if you did get their tongue tie cut and you did in the future want to try again you can because they're used to a slower flow (I exclusively pumped from 9 weeks till 25 weeks and now I do a mix of breast and exclusively pumping - she suddenly latched one morning and now will most of the time)
It's a lot of effort but it's worth it. I do wanted to breast feed full time. But my baby was a sleepy baby until 2 months old. So we did breast, formula and expressed will till 9 weeks when I finally went enough.
You got some great info and tips from the ladies. The hardest part is finding the pump that you get on well with, i have the spectra s1 and momcozy m5 both give me the same output but i mainly use my momcozy as its wearable. Then the flange sizes as most pumps come with either 24 or 28 flange and are way too big for most women. Use coconut oil to lube the flanges as the friction can cause a little pain, but pumping should be pain free. I would recommend u pump every 2-3 hours as your only 1 month pp and as the first comment said a power pump session between 2am to 5am is really important as thats when ur hormone levels are the highest. 30 mins is the maximum in session except a power pump session, but you can start with 10-20min and see if you need to do more, also play around with the modes on the pump as that can help with letdowns and maximise ur output. Consistency is key and eat enough calories so full meals and snacking and staying really hydrated is important.
@Helen I am going to message you, if you do not mind i want to know how you managed to get ur little one to re latch.
Great help from the ladies above. Also there are some very helpful groups on Facebook for exclusive pumpers with lots of info and help . X
This is amazing ladies !!! Thank you so so much. I really appreciate it ❤️❤️
I’m exclusively pumping i pump every 3 hours for 30min then i do a power pump (30min on 10min off 10min on 10min off 10min on) once a day to help build my supply up after it dropped make sure your keeping hydrated. i am looking after baby all on my own so sometimes i cant pump every 3hours as my pumping times align with her feeding times but i try to keep it as regular as i can if i can i will only pump one side then the next but most of the time im able to do both at the same time as i just use my wearable ones. personally i find it the hardest throughout the night as i wake up feed baby burp her and put her down then still need to pump and store it so it takes up like 2 hours then when im finally getting back to sleep the cycle starts again. i would also recommend looking into a hospital grade pump ( are more pricey)